Modern portable consumer and industrial electronics provide increasing levels of functionality to support modern life including location-based information services. This is especially true for client devices such as navigation systems, cellular phones, portable digital assistants, and multifunction devices.
As users adopt mobile location-based service devices, new and old usage begin to take advantage of this new device space. There are many solutions to take advantage of this new device opportunity. One existing approach is to use location information to provide navigation services, such as a global positioning service (GPS) navigation system for a mobile device.
Navigation system and service providers are continually making improvement in the user's experience in order to be competitive. In navigation services, demand for better usability to help with safe driving is increasingly important.
If drivers take their eyes off the road even for a few seconds to see GPS navigation application screen, there would be danger of accident because they loose sight of the road. This problem will be amplified in future generation GPS navigation systems that use large screens and present rich set of navigation or other information.
The problem can occur when users interacting with navigation systems while parking or driving. The users commonly interact with navigation systems to perform task such as entering destination address details, searching for a desired destination like restaurant or hotel, or interacting with other features as may be enabled in the navigation systems. In all of these cases, interaction with the GPS navigation systems causes the users to loose sight of the road and around the vehicle.
In general, users get distracted while driving when the users operate navigation systems. Being distracted while operating vehicles may cause accidents whether on or off road. For instance, a user may have his/her car in the garage and notices that there is no object behind the car before interacting with the navigation system. He/she may spend some time entering a destination in the navigation system and then may back up the vehicle thinking that there is still no object behind the vehicle. While user was interacting with the navigation system, it is possible that another vehicle, a child, or any object can appear behind his/her vehicle.
Even though “while driving don't operate” warning may be provided in navigation systems, users are likely to look at the navigation systems and operate them. There are simple functions such as volume and brightness control that are useful and operated by the users while driving. There are more complex interactions as mentioned earlier that may also be performed by the users knowingly or unknowingly. In such cases, the users loose sight of the road and around the vehicle.
In response to consumer demand, navigation systems are providing ever-increasing amounts of information requiring these systems to improve usability. This information includes map data, business data, local weather, and local driving conditions. The demand for more information and the need for providing user-friendly experience to help with safe driving continue to challenge the providers of navigation systems.
Thus, a need remains for a navigation system to provide information with improvement in usability. In view of the ever-increasing commercial competitive pressures, along with growing consumer expectations and the diminishing opportunities for meaningful product differentiation in the marketplace, it is increasingly critical that answers be found to these problems. Additionally, the need to reduce costs, improve efficiencies and performance, and meet competitive pressures adds an even greater urgency to the critical necessity for finding answers to these problems.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.